Space suit blowdown is carried out prior to each flight several hours before the launch. Journalists and relatives come to see how space suits of cosmonauts are proofed for impermeability. Then they have some time to talk to their families.

Before leaving the hotel, the cosmonauts sign on doors of their rooms with black markers. It’s a tradition kept since the Soviet time.

To the music of a popular Russian space song the crew come out of the training center and get in the bus to head to the cosmodrome.

A specially equipped bus transports the main crew, another one carries backup crew members. The buses are followed by the police.